DuPont users question possible nighttime closure

Wednesday

Feb 26, 2014 at 3:00 AM

A proposal to close visitation to DuPont State Recreational Forest at night, except by permit, has divided a citizen advisory committee and raised questions about how best to balance resource protection and free access to public land.

By Nathaniel AxtellTimes-News Staff Writer

A proposal to close visitation to DuPont State Recreational Forest at night, except by permit, has divided a citizen advisory committee and raised questions about how best to balance resource protection and free access to public land.Forest Supervisor Jason Guidry, six months into his new position, said he first approached the DuPont State Forest Advisory Committee in October with the idea of limiting operating hours as a way to deter illegal activity occurring at night.Guidry said rangers have dealt with large groups partying and littering beer cans at Fawn Lake and Hooker Falls after dark, along with sporadic vandalism, drug use in parking lots and other issues. In 2007, vandals dug up a grave at the forest's Moore Cemetery near Hooker Falls. “A lot of stuff goes on at night,” Guidry said. “If you're out here at 2 o'clock in the morning, what are the odds you're up to no good?”DuPont has six full-time staff, but just three full-time rangers who regularly patrol the forest's 10,400 acres, and only at night when dispatched. With visitation at an all-time high, Guidry said his staff is stretched pretty thin, has no law enforcement rangers and relies on sheriff's deputies and wildlife officers for help.By establishing operating hours with signs excluding all but “authorized visitors” from an hour after sunset to an hour before sunrise, Guidry suggested the park could deter illegal activity while still accommodating legitimate nighttime users through special-use permits. “It's not to restrict use; that's not the intent. My hope is that the signage and hours will do some of the work our rangers can't,” Guidry said, adding the N.C. Forest Service has just five law enforcement rangers statewide who carry a duty weapon and make arrests. “If it keeps some of the riff-raff away, then it's a success.”Moreover, Guidry said state rules require all forests to post hours of operation at every entrance, office and on its websites. Those rules state, “No person except forest employees and authorized persons shall be allowed within the forest between closing and opening hours except under permit.”Currently, DuPont issues permits for search and rescue exercises, Scout groups and hunters, among others. Forest officials are still working with the advisory committee to ponder nighttime permit specifics such as duration and approved uses. DuPont is the only state forest without posted operating hours, Guidry said. After hearing no objections at the October advisory committee meeting, “we actually had signs made up,” he said. “We thought we'd gotten the feedback. And then we just heard more and more concerns about it.”Several members of the 12-person advisory committee, appointed by the state forester to represent DuPont stakeholders, criticized the potential nighttime closure during the group's January meeting. Among them was committee member R.R. Hebb, a retired wildlife officer who lives near DuPont.Restricting hours at DuPont runs counter to the principles of open public access under which the state's first recreational forest was founded, Hebb said. He agreed few people use DuPont after dark, but even those who don't find “solace and relief from the everyday troubles of life” knowing they can retreat to the forest, day or night.Hebb believes DuPont has existing rules, including one allowing violators to be expelled from the forest, that rangers should enforce fully with the help of local sheriff's deputies, game wardens and Alcohol Law Enforcement agents before instituting new ones that “penalize” legitimate users.Pisgah National Forest, which Hebb patrolled as a game warden, has experienced problems with litter and partying in select areas yet remains open 24 hours, he said. “We'd work it until it wasn't a problem anymore. They need to get in there and enforce the law, and pound them awhile with tickets that get into people's pocketbooks.”However, Guidry said if rangers encounter partiers in the forest at night, “we have to catch them in the act. If they put their beer down and claim it's not theirs, how do we ask these folks to leave? Hours would give us the ability to say, 'Hey, do you have a permit? If not, you don't have a right to be on the forest at night.'”That argument makes sense to Aleen Steinberg, a member of the advisory committee who supports closing DuPont at night. She said legitimate nighttime users, such as solstice hikers, mountain bikers or people viewing the forest's famous blue ghost fireflies, won't be barred under the proposed permits.“There have to be parameters,” Steinberg said. “We live in a society that has parameters. Just to have five parking lots, it's hard to control, it's hard to patrol and it's hard to monitor if you don't have some rules to go by.”Like Steinberg, committee member Woody Keen of Cedar Mountain worked to save DuPont from development back in the 1990s. He often mountain bikes and hikes in the forest at night and thinks a permit system would inconvenience casual users, while adding to administrators' already-hefty workload.“To me, that doesn't make sense,” Keen said. “I want a scenario where people can make a spur-of-the-moment decision to go based on conditions that evening.”A long-time trails advocate and builder, Keen argued the best way to displace “rogue behavior” on public lands is “putting legitimate uses in that spot. You need eyes and ears on the property to curtail bad actors, and those eyes and ears don't have to be land managers.”But Keen, who works with the Pisgah Area Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association, said he could support closing DuPont from midnight to 6 a.m. “That would allow 99 percent of the legitimate use after dark,” including bikers who want to get in a ride after work in the winter or hikers who want to stargaze up on Big Rock, he said.Page Lemel, a Transylvania County commissioner who sits on the advisory committee, sees both sides of the issue. A camp owner and commercial outfitter, Lemel understands the challenges DuPont officials face in managing a growing number of visitors while protecting forest resources. But meeting the needs of legal, recreational users is critical, she said.“Honestly, I suggested we look at (permits) like a library card,” Lemel said. “It could be free to residents of the two counties, good for two years or what have you, and you have it hanging on your car rearview. That way they're able to distinguish who they're dealing with (at night) and it would provide rangers with knowledge about who's in the forest then.”Chairwoman Beth Carden said the advisory committee will meet again March 20 to discuss the issue of operating hours and potential permitting, adding consensus might be difficult to achieve given the split opinions of the group.“The bottom line is the staff will do what the state tells them to do with regard to hours,” Carden said. “We can advise them, but we're not in control of setting policy.”___Reach Axtell at 828-694-7860 or than.axtell@blueridgenow.com.